Brussels, 22/08/2002 (Agence Europe) - By participating in the Johannesburg Summit beginning next week, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) hopes to demonstrate how it addresses problems, based on its experience with the European social model, but also to explain how unions can be players in sustainable development, announced Marc Sapir, Director of the European Trade Union Technical Bureau (TUTB), who will participate in the Johannesburg Summit for the ETUC as an observer member in the Commission delegation. To this end, the ETUC has drafted a paper entitled "European Trade Unions - Actors for Sustainable Development", which discusses a number of priority subjects: clean energy and climate, food and agriculture, and chemicals.
In its preface, the ETUC "calls on governments to adopt a global plan for sustainable development which will assure the eradication of poverty, environmental protection and respect for human and social rights". The plan is designed to make possible urgent action on the social dimension of sustainable development by recognising the following as fundamental factors in the fight against poverty: fundamental social rights, employment and training, and access to collective services (water, energy, education, health, and communication infrastructures through the public services). And the Unions expect the European Union "to play an avant-garde role to ensure the implementation of these principles and objectives". Regarding the subjects addressed in the ETUC paper, Marc Sapir explained that: (1) clean energy and climate change "are the subject of great international debate by unions, notably in the Untied States. Within the trade union movement, there is debate over the Kyoto Protocol, which we support, but which the American unions do not!. The difficulty is seeing how to implement it"; (2) "for the first time, food and agriculture issues are addressed by the ETUC, which was questioned by unions from the third world. We must show them that we have a position on tomorrow's agricultural guidelines, that we favour a reorientation of the common agricultural policy and that one of the answers to these questions is to develop European policies or transform them. This is an important signal in the EU but also to our G7 colleagues. Food and agriculture represent tremendous stakes in terms of employment at global level"; (3) concerning chemical risks, "a more traditional subject, the position of the trade unions is that there needs to be room for a European policy in the face of a global problem (also before the WTO). The essential question that will arise in the future will be how to eliminate or reduce workers' exposure to these chemical risks (asbestos, for example) at the workplace".
Concerning unions' role in sustainable development, Marc Sapir stressed the importance of having instruments for dialogue with businesses. "The ETUC is trying to show how a number of issues must be presented both within an enterprise and outside it. Action at sectoral level is required, as is the development in Europe of sector-based social dialogue". Mr Sapir added that, in Johannesburg, the ETUC would insist that the Commission "give due regard to social questions through the theme of good governance, and to employment policy. The fact of having a job must be tied in with having a decent job". And he concluded: "We think that it is possible to surmount the environment-employment divide and that the coordination of economic, social and environmental policies is essential to building sustainable development".